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Is Germany the poor man of Europe, and must southern Europeans pay more wealth tax?

The data was revealed a week or so ago. It is pretty clear cut. According to the ECB, the median wealth of the Spanish is 183,000 euros, 172,000 euros for Italians, 75,000 for the Portuguese, and a stunning 267,000 euros in Cyprus. In contrast, median wealth in Germany is just 51,000 euros.

So that’s it then. The problem is not that the poor old Spanish and Cypriots are being pulverised by the vicious EU, which is being prompted by Germany into punishing them for mythical misdeeds. Instead, the real problem is that poverty stricken German households barely have two cents to rub together.

The solution is simple enough: tax ‘em. Have a wealth tax. And where will it end? Will the meat in your freezer – beef, horse or otherwise – be seen as wealth and subjected to tax?

There is an alternative take. Writing in the ‘FT’, Wolfgang Munchau argued that the ECB survey was in fact being taken out of context. For one thing, he said median wealth is a meaningless guide. He said: “If you want to compare across countries, it is better to take the mean.” Mr Munchau suggested that if we use mean wealth as the guide, then Germany’s does not lag behind troubled Europe as much as the quoted data suggests. It is not clear that Mr Munchau is right here, however. After all, median data is the better measure for telling us the position of most people, and is not distorted by a small number of people with massive wealth.

But Mr Munchau made a more substantive point. Actually the differences in wealth are a symptom of the euro – that is to say, a Cypriot euro has less value than a German euro, hence Cypriot assets appear to be worth more.

Others question the limitation of the ECB data, and say it does not take into account savings in pension schemes.

But there are other more important points. For one thing, the ECB survey relates to asset values from a couple of years ago. Asset prices across much of troubled Europe have crashed since.

Besides we all know that in Germany the housing market is seen as less important. The Germans do not celebrate house prices going up – they mourn.

The data does suggest an interesting idea though. Is the reason the savings ratio in Germany is relatively high, and thus consumption to income relatively low, because Germans have less wealth tied in the home, and after a period of rising house prices, appear to have less wealth?

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